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I derogate the efforts of the several following generations of
physics/electronics researchers who COULD have given us the
transistor but failed to do so for a conspicuously long period.
In the opening years of the twentieth century,
Fleming provided an effective application of the Edison diode
effect to radio. DeForest was able to generalize this concept
to the three electrode thermionic triode. He made this leap
very fast and very effectively.
Despite the clearly analogous semiconductor diode device
which was to be found in many households, NOBODY took
the corresponding DeForest leap into the three terminal
semiconductor for fifty years or so.
I don't disparage the magnitude of Bardeen, Brattain and
Shockley's seminal discovery in 1948: I DO point out that
the material for this experiment was sitting on the lab bench
and in the domestic living room for the preceding forty years
or more.